BASIC CONCEPTS

— When novelists claim they do not invent it, but hear voices and find stories in their head, they are neither joking nor crazy.

— When characters, narrators, or muses have minds of their own and occasionally take over, they are alternate personalities.

— Alternate personalities and memory gaps, but no significant distress or dysfunction, is a normal version of multiple personality.

— normal Multiple Personality Trait (MPT) (core of Multiple Identity Literary Theory), not clinical Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD)

— The normal version of multiple personality is an asset in fiction writing when some alternate personalities are storytellers.

— Multiple personality originates when imaginative children with normal brains have unassuaged trauma as victim or witness.

— Psychiatrists, whose standard mental status exam fails to ask about memory gaps, think they never see multiple personality.

— They need the clue of memory gaps, because alternate personalities don’t acknowledge their presence until their cover is blown.

— In novels, most multiple personality, per se, is unnoticed, unintentional, and reflects the author’s view of ordinary psychology.

— Multiple personality means one person who has more than one identity and memory bank, not psychosis or possession.

— Euphemisms for alternate personalities include parts, pseudonyms, alter egos, doubles, double consciousness, voice or voices.

— Multiple personality trait: 90% of fiction writers; possibly 30% of public.

— Each time you visit, search "name index" or "subject index," choose another name or subject, and search it.

— If you read only recent posts, you miss most of what this site has to offer.

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MPD Textbooks: — Frank W. Putnam, MD. Diagnosis and Treatment of Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD) (a.k.a. Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), New York, The Guilford Press, 1989. —James G. Friesen, PhD. Uncovering the Mystery of MPD, (includes discussion of demonic possession) Eugene, Oregon, Wipf and Stock Publishers,1997.

Sunday, January 4, 2015

“Me, Me, Me and My Therapist: This is what it feels like to suffer from dissociative identity disorder” by Vivian Conan in today’s New York Times

“…Outside-Me was a competent grown-up in my 50s, involved with family and friends and holding two jobs…Inside-Me was a conglomerate of 10 or so people-parts whom I referred to variously as I, we, she, they or even ourself. I’d been that way ever since I could remember, but never thought to mention it to any of the five [previous] therapists I’d seen since I was 16.

“It wasn’t until my late 40s that I learned I had Dissociative Identity Disorder [Multiple Personality Disorder]…

“One of those Inside was Wendy, a precocious 6-year-old who, like her namesake in ‘Peter Pan,' was a caretaker. Wendy often dominated our [therapy] sessions, appointing herself speaker whenever she felt any of us was vulnerable. The moment we heard about [her therapist’s upcoming] sailing trip, she’d popped out to direct the interrogation…”

The above is from today's essay by Vivian Conan, who is working on a memoir.
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